You became the world's youngest

billionaire at the age of 25. You've got

Mark Zuckerberg offering you $3 billion.

That was a a fateful day for sure, but

we decided that we'd rather go it alone.

Was there ever a day where you doubted

that decision?

Evan Spiegel is the co-founder behind

one of the world's biggest social media

platforms, Snapchat. He turned

disappearing messages into a

multi-billion dollar empire, redefining

how we connect online. Evan, you don't

do many podcasts, do you? I don't do

much public speaking at all, but I want

to share a bit more. So, if let's go

back to those early days. So, I was an

introvert growing up and I loved to

build stuff. At school, I had built my

own computer. And once you start

realizing that things that look really

complicated on the surface aren't that

difficult, you start wondering, you

know, what else you can build. So, that

led to building Snapchat at 21. So, I

was in undergrad at Stanford and we'd

raised

$485,000 at a $4.25 million valuation.

What a deal. But back then there

were a lot of apps that would get

popular really really quickly and then

sort of fade away. And a lot of people

told us that we should sell it. They

said you're just sending photos back and

forth. How is this going to grow for the

long term? But the growth of Snapchat

was atypical to say the least. It was

like this virus and it was reaching 75

million users on a monthly basis. So I

wondered if you had any advice on the

fundamental principles of success. How

much people care about what they do and

the ability to move quickly is the

predictor of success. And at Snapchat we

have a really small design team. It's

nine people who are constantly

generating an incredible number of ideas

and products and features because 99% of

ideas are not good, but 1% is. I want to

know what they teach at Stanford because

the success rate of creating some of the

world's pre-minent entrepreneurs is

really, really high. There were a lot of

very good lessons. The first one is

this has always blown my mind a little

bit. 53% of you that listen to this show

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continue to do what we do. Thank you so

[Music]

much, Evan. When you look back over your

earliest years and you you try and make

sense of the dots that connected in

hindsight, I guess, as Steve Jobs once

said, what are those dots?

There were a couple fateful choices that

my parents made that I think had a huge

impact. One was that they never let me

watch TV. So, they never let me watch

TV. It didn't uh want me to spend my

time doing that, but at the same time

would allow me to get whatever book I

wanted. And that was a really uh I think

formative experience for me and and

reading a book you get to use your

imagination a lot you know to try to

paint the characters in your own mind

and that was really helpful and because

I wasn't watching TV I had a lot of time

on my hands and so I like to build stuff

I mean when I was young I would make a

little fake hotel in our living room and

you know have a guest experience where

my parents could come and you know try

to stay at our hotel and I I got to use

my imagination a lot at home and my

parents never made me feel bad about

turning the house upside down, moving

chairs around to to express myself and

and make stuff. Did you feel like you

fitted in when you were a kid? No, not

not at all. No. Um I I was more of an

introvert um growing up. So, you know, I

think sometimes that made it harder for

me to, you know, feel like I fit in. And

when did computers come into the picture

for you? Uh I guess I I was exposed to

my first computer. Gosh,

probably kindergarten, first grade,

maybe around that uh period of time. I

my godfather brought over one of the

early Macintoshes to show our our family

and I got to try out things like Kidpics

and and stuff like that. And then I

guess later on in school, I I went to

the computer lab a lot. My I really

wanted my own computer. So the big

breakthrough was when my mom said, you

know, if you build your own computer,

you can have it. uh we won't let you

connect it to the internet, but if you

build your own computer, you can have it

to to play with. And so that was

probably by sixth grade, I had a teacher

who helped me uh you know, take all the

different pieces you need and and put

them all together to to build a

computer. And I think the this act of

you know, putting together these pieces,

turning it on, you know, getting uh you

know, windows up and running, um just

made me realize why it's it seems so

complicated on the outside when you're

just looking at that tower, that box,

right? or you know and you haven't yet

open opened it up and seen what's inside

I think it can seem really confusing or

complicated but as soon as you realize

it's not that hard uh you know to to put

it all together and and to get started I

think there's something really

empowering about that about that feeling

what what does that feeling teach you I

I think you know and I think this is

much more the case now because you know

if you go on YouTube you can learn how

to do pretty much anything right but I

think uh once you start realizing that

things that look really complicated or

confusing on the surface aren't aren't

that difficult. Do you you start

wondering, you know, what else you can

build or what else you can create or,

you know, how else you can can

experiment with something that seems

impossible from the outside, but really

it's just not that hard. And you got

bullied in school, right? Was it sixth

grade that you got bullied or was it

sometime thereafter? Yeah, middle school

was not the I think not the easiest

easiest time for me. Why? Um, you know,

as I mentioned, I sort of, you know, had

trouble fitting in. I I I didn't do a

lot of activities that some other

schoolmates did like you know sports and

stuff. I played t you know a little bit

on the on the tennis team. Um but so I

think you know the combination of not

really playing sports with friends,

spending a lot of time in the computer

lab uh you know at lunch or or after

school I think you know just led to me

feeling a bit socially isolated at you

know at what is I think a tricky time

for for lots of kids. What were you like

as a kid? Were you confident? I don't I

don't know if I was confident in myself

per se, but I definitely was confident

in my ideas. Like I was willing to take

a stand for ideas that I thought were

different or I was willing to explore

ideas that didn't seem popular at the

time because I thought it was, you know,

important. I I was uh I was talking to

my my dad's has been staying with us for

a while and I was talking with him. I

was like, "What do you know, what

stories do you think I could tell about

growing up? What do you think?" And he

was like, "Oh, you should tell them. You

were definitely like a contrarian, you

know." I was like, "What do you mean by

contrarian?" He's like, "Don't you

remember you wrote that article that was

like an expose of the math program

because you were, you know, you you

basically interviewed all these teachers

and kids and parents and, you know, uh,

wrote this whole expose about how the

math program could be better." And he

was like, you know, it was sort of like

maybe better left unsaid in that

environment. But the school to their

credit supported me and like let me

publish it. And uh you know I think

created an environment where you know

kids could challenge authority which

which was really uh you know something

that that I learned was okay. I guess

that's a principle as well of many of

the people that I meet like you is that

they're okay with pushing against

convention and you know certain moments

in your life you make these decisions

which one would say are contrarian bets.

I can I can see them all over your

story, but clearly that was something

innate in you from a fairly young age as

you look back. You don't do many

podcasts, do you? I don't do much public

speaking at all. It's it's a 2025 New

Year's resolution for me, though. So,

we'll see. You know, I'm I'm trying to

trying to, you know, share a bit more.

Why? Um, I think it's really important

that people understand our our company

and what we stand for, why we make the

decisions that we do and and I think

part of that is, you know, getting to

know me and Bobby and I, you know,

started this business 13 years ago and

we have made a bunch of different

choices along the way. But I think

unless we talk about them, nobody knows.

Um, and so it's it's really important

for us to share, you know, how how we

make decisions and our design philosophy

and and that kind of thing. It's a

really interesting time I think to be a

CEO generally because I think even 1015

years ago CEOs of major companies that

so many people use and love weren't

doing podcasts. They weren't they would

maybe release press releases and their

marketing team would kind of run the

coms. But there's been this almost big

shift towards leadership transparency

now where leaders are like expected to

be glass boxes.

I think even beyond that media has

really reshaped to focus on individuals,

right? Individuals are the are what

people are interested in. They're the

ones who have distribution. So I think

that like the the center of gravity has

shifted away from the entity like the

business to focus more on the individual

characters, right, and storytellers. So

you went off to university um you went

to Stanford University which is an

incredible university and you went to

ultimately try and pursue product design

at Stanford. Why did you choose product

design at that stage in your life? What

was it that was calling you about that

course? Well, what's really cool about

product design is the basic concept is

like you don't need to wait around and

you know wait for an idea to fall out of

heaven or get struck by lightning. You

can systematically create new ideas by

listening to people, empathizing with

them and then basically prototyping

solutions to the problems that they

share with you and then iterating on

those solutions by bringing those

solutions back to them and saying, "What

do you think? does this solve your

problem? So for me to be able to combine

um my love of making things with this

process for making things that could be

useful to people making new products

that was really uh exciting to me and

and the product design school was

created by a really visionary guy named

David Kelly. I had the opportunity to

take a class from him and it was it was

really just uh an incredible experience.

What is product design for someone like

someone like me that has no idea what

they teach in such a course? Is it cuz

my head says like designing like

physical products or a lot of the

product design school at Stanford is

oriented around physical products of

course now you know it's so much more uh

than that but when I when I was there at

the time and it was under the mechanical

engineering department it was very

oriented around physical products

understanding materials but all part of

this framework of how do we understand

the problems that people are facing how

do we empathize with them and then how

do we design solutions that solve those

problems. Did you learn entrepreneurship

through this time as well? Because I

think in your sophomore year you took a

a class on entrepreneurship and venture

capital, right? Yeah, that was that was

really a gamecher. So I that that uh

class called entrepreneurship and

venture capital and the class is a

series of case

studies basically led by entrepreneurs

who come in and present the story of

creating their business and lessons

learned and then it's an open Q&A. I got

to listen to their amazing stories and

and ask them questions and and that was

super inspiring to me. Do you remember

anything you took away from those

classes that ended up being really

important for you in terms of an idea or

a philosophy or anything? I think the

biggest thing that I took away from my

time at at Stanford and from that class

was the focus on going after really

really big opportunities. And I think

one of the things that's so different

and growing up here in LA, I think a lot

of the the business community that I was

exposed to is more focused on cash flow,

right? Like how quickly can this

business turn a profit, you know, how

can we do that really predictably? How

much cash are we going to generate? At

Stanford, the business culture is

entirely oriented around well, how big

is that opportunity? Like is that a huge

opportunity? Is that opportunity big

enough? Because if it if you're not

going after something that could reach

billions of people, that's not that

interesting. Uh and that was a totally

different way of thinking for me

combined with the venture capital

approach which is really to invest a lot

of money early and scale quickly and

then build out the business later uh

after you've achieved scale after you've

achieved mass adoption. I've always

wondered what they teach at Stanford

especially as it relates to business

because the success rate of creating

some of the world's sort of pre-minent

entrepreneurs is really really high. So

you're telling me one of the key ideas

is big ambitions. Yeah. And and I think

it makes sense because it's so hard to

create a business, your odds of success

are so low. So it's really important

that you go after something really big.

So that if you're successful that at the

end of the day there there's a huge

opportunity at the at the end of the

rainbow. So my in my head I go, well, if

it's really really big, then the chance

of failure is probably going to go up.

So you know, I could open a coffee shop,

right? And my chance of success is

pretty decent. But if I go after

building a new social network, which is

something only a psychopath would do,

then my odds of success are what, one in

a gazillion. Yeah. I I I think what is

exciting though about the technology

business is the way that it scales. And

so I think what's different than your

coffee shop example is once you build a

great service, once once we build

Snapchat one time, it can scale to 850

million people around the world, right?

Whereas you'd have to go build a new

coffee shop. uh you know on every on

every street corner to scale the

business. And so once once I think you

start seeing the world in terms of the

potential to scale and the potential to

build you know a product or service that

can reach billions of people it really

changes you know the opportunities you

identify or the things that you know the

services that you want to build.

Interesting. So the question that most

of us especially in the UK we we often

don't think about building businesses

that have the potential to reach huge

scale.

um in part because we don't have as much

of a robust I think technical track

record in terms of building great

unicorn tech companies in Europe as you

guys do over here. One of the I mean I

don't know if we want to go down this

path and talk about entrepreneurship in

Europe, but I think one of the real

challenges in Europe is how small the

different markets are in each country.

And so I think what's really interesting

what I when I talk to entrepreneurs in

Europe oftentimes they're very focused

on growing first in their country and

using that market as a stepping stone.

But the all the countries in Europe are

quite different. They're different

cultures and different languages. And so

sometimes entrepreneurs can spend too

much time trying to grow in Europe

rather than what I've seen out of some

companies. In Australia, for example,

they're on an island. The first thing

that these entrepreneurs are thinking

about is like, how do I go grow in the

US? How do I go grow in China? How do I

go grow in a really really big market

and get to scale really quickly? And

then I can go reinvest and grow in

Europe or grow in other countries where

it might be more difficult to to grow.

That is so true. Thinking about my

investment portfolio, there's about 40

different companies there and almost

every single one of them without without

really an exception has adopted the

approach of we'll crack the UK first and

then we'll go and figure out the US. But

in that transition to the US, they

encounter tons of challenges with how

expensive it is to succeed here, like

marketing costs here, if they're in

retail, how difficult it is to get into

Target or Walmart here. Also, the

founders end up building their lives,

their families in the UK, which means

that the f the founders can't really,

you know, uproot and and move to the US

later in the journey. So, most of them

try the US, waste a ton of money, get

burnt, run back, and then I've seen that

story play over and over again. When you

think about penetrating these

international markets, do you send core

team members there? Often times, what

we've done with Snapchat is actually

follow the growth. So looking for

countries where people have already

started using the product, already love

it, are giving us a bunch of feedback,

and then, you know, we'll send folks

there or we'll figure out how to sort of

build on the momentum or make sure it's

localized properly, make sure we're

working with local creators so that the

content's relevant. But I think, you

know, because our service is based on

communication, it, you know, Snapchat

doesn't really work unless you're using

it with a friend. You got to use it

together. uh what we look for is just

that momentum where friends are are

using it to communicate with one another

and then figure out how to build on top

of that with the content ecosystem or

augmented reality and those sorts of

things. What was your first idea that

failed? Oh my well there there were I

mean I made an orange juicer at one

point um but this but um but I think the

biggest the biggest failure was future

freshman Bobby and I I I was really

fortunate to meet Bobby. He lived across

the hall from me uh at our our

fraternity at at Stanford and we you

know we shared this love of making

stuff. So we you know we had kind of

worked on a couple social ideas that

were interesting but the one thing we

decided to spend a lot of time on was

future freshmen which was designed to

help kids apply to college. It was

something that we'd had direct

experience with so we could empathize

with how difficult the process is. We

had siblings who were also applying to

college. So we spent about 18 months

building like a fullfeatured website.

You could select the schools you wanted

to go to. it would aggregate all the

essay questions and requirements and

make it really easy to apply. Um, but it

was very clear by the end of that 18

months or so that it was going to be

really difficult for us to to win. We

were up against a company called

Naviance which had their own software

suite and they had a really good idea

which is they went to all the college

counselors around the US you know and

high schools and things like that and

said hey tell everyone to use Naviance

uh make sure your students parents are

using our platform and so they got a a

lot of distribution through all the

different schools and so obviously

you're going to use the platform that's

being recommended by your college

counselor not you know an app made by

two kids uh out of Stanford um and so we

had a real distrib contribution

disadvantage. And then we also realized

like even if we were wildly successful

and we got, you know, the million

students, you know, a year who applied

to four-year colleges or, you know,

something like that, we would have to

then reacquire another million students

the next year. Uh, and so we sort of had

this uh realization that it was going to

be really hard to build a big uh a big

business and that we really ought to try

something different and most importantly

try to to build something that wouldn't

take 18 months to build before we got

great feedback. So to try to build

something really simple um you know that

that people could could try and and that

we could collect feedback on faster. So

two points there. How do you know when

to quit? You've kind of assembled a

couple of principles there but even it's

I think it's difficult in business

because you can be getting lots of

negative feedback but that doesn't

necessarily mean that the idea is

something that you should quit. Maybe it

means you should pivot or iterate or

just keep going. But how did you know

what were the stars that align that told

you to quit that business? I I think for

us it was that we didn't love the

product enough. I think if you really

love the product, you you know, and you

love what you're building, what you're

doing, you can fight through just about

anything. I mean, that was really the

case with the early days of Snapchat. We

loved uh build, you know, using using

the product. We were using it all day

with our friends. So, we could really we

just had an attachment to it that we

never, you know, really developed with

future freshmen because we weren't

applying to college. So, we didn't have

that same, I think, connection with the

product that we ended up developing with

Snapchat. And why does that end up

mattering so much? That like love and

passion for the thing that you're

building? Because I think that's what

you know, the love and passion for what

you're building and the love and passion

for the people you're working with, like

that's what allows you to get through,

you know, all the challenges that come

when you try to to to build a business.

I think if you don't love what you're

doing, I mean, I just absolutely love

what I do and and the team that we get

to work with and and of course the the

products that we make, the community we

serve. And I think without that just

love for what you do, it's it can be,

you know, it can it can be hard. And you

the other thing you said was you felt

that you should go after a business that

didn't take like 18 months, like two

years of your time to build before you

got it to market. Why is that for

entrepreneurs that are listening that

maybe have spent years perfecting

something in their bedroom that hasn't

gone to market yet? Why was that insight

so important to you for your next

venture? I think getting that feedback

from your customers as quickly and early

as possible is critical, even if it's on

like the back of a napkin. and like,

"Hey, here's what I'm thinking. This is

what it's going to look like." What do

you think about that idea? Because it's

very hard to know whether or not you

have a good idea unless you can put

something in front of people and have

them use it. I mean, that's almost one

of the cardinal rules of the product

design program that you I guess we will

willfully uh ignored, which is that you

should really rapidly prototype and get

feedback as quickly as possible so that

you know you're on the right track. I

mean, even in the early days, you know,

Snapchat before was called Snapchat was

called Pickaboo. It was more focused on

disappearing messages. Very quickly we

learned that wasn't interesting to

people. They wanted to communicate with

pictures. They wanted to talk with

pictures. So when we called the app

Snapchat, we explained that it was 10

times faster than sending a photo via

text message. People were like, "Oh, I

want that. Like that's something that

I'll use every day." And so it was just

really interesting to get the feedback

really really early on, you know, with

the with an initial version of the app

that took, you know, a couple months to

create. I think this is a really

interesting point that a lot of founders

don't realize that even companies like

yours, they start with an initial

hypothesis which is nearly always wrong.

But kind of when you hear these stories,

you hear like had an idea in my basement

and then pursued it and then it became a

billion dollar business. But there's

something in the like humility and the

realization that your initial idea might

be wild be off and that your job isn't

to like be right, it is to be successful

and they're like two different things,

right? I I totally agree and I think the

the challenge someone I I think this was

like one of those Vanity Fair parties a

million years ago. The the the souvenir

was a lighter and like on one side it's

like the director is always right and on

the other side it's like the customer is

never wrong, you know? And I think like

that's like always the interesting

challenge with a business that you have

to stay true to your vision, the reason

why you're building a product, your

philosophy, but at the same time, your

customers are the people you serve and

and ultimately how they feel about your

product is is right, whether or not you

agree with it. So, how did you get past

um future freshmen to your next

business? What was the journey from

there? So, you'd met your co-founder at

that point, Bobby. And how did you then

move over to the idea of Snapchat? I

think one of the things that was really

helpful is that I did a semester a

quarter abroad uh in Cape Town and I

think taking a step back and being there

sort of gave me perspective about what

we were working I was working on it

while I was still working on future

freshman while I was there but it really

gave me like more perspective and and I

think you know I just realized this is

going to be really hard and I don't

really love what we're doing we got to

find something else and was that more

than anything a feeling you had like a

feeling of just I'm not enjoying doing

this every day opening my emails

thinking about this problem. Yeah. I

think it's so important to listen to

those feelings. Yeah.

Yeah. We were very good at not listening

to them. Think because parents and other

pressures, right, to continue doing

something. So then how did you get from

there from being in Cape Town to the

idea for Snapchat? Well, I came back uh

from Cape Town. I moved into um a dorm

at Stanford. One of my buddies who had

been Reggie, one of my friends who had

been living in our fraternity before,

was also in that same dorm. So, we were

hanging out and, you know, one day he

was like, "Man, I wish I I could send a

disappearing photo." I was like, "That's

a super interesting idea." And we looked

it up. There were a couple other apps

that were doing some similar stuff at

the time. Um, but they were very they

were much more like like security

focused. They weren't really focused as

much on on fun, you know? So, that's a

super interesting idea. And you could

see really quickly that it it was simple

enough that we could build it and get

feedback really quickly, you know, and I

I think there were a couple uh important

design choices uh that we made at the

time. One was opening to the camera. Um

we really wanted to be the, you know,

the the tagline is the fastest way to

share a moment. We wanted to be the

fastest way to share a moment. And at

the time, I don't know if you remember,

the iPhone had like a shutter animation.

So you would like tap the camera to open

it and it would take forever to like

open up the camera super slow. Oh, and

there was a big toggle. You had to

choose between the camera and and video,

right? So, there's all this friction in

in using the camera. So, we decided

we're going to open the camera. We're

going to get rid of that animation and

you're going to be able to go straight

into capturing what's happening in front

of you before the moment disappears. So,

that I think that was a a really

important um choice that we made. And

then of course the choice to let people

choose how long they wanted to let

someone um you know see their snap, but

with the caveat that you could always

take a screenshot. Um and that was

probably one of the most important

pieces of feedback we got in the initial

in in the initial day. So we built the

prototype of the app. I took it to my

design class. Here's this new app. It's

called Pikaboo. You can set a photo that

disappears. You know, this is really

different than social media. Social

media is all about permanence and you're

trying to look popular and collect all

these likes and comments and pretty

pictures. You know, that's the 1% of

moments in your life. And here's

Snapchat. This is or Peek-ab-oo at the

time. Here's Peek-ab-oo. This is for the

other 99%. Right? All the other moments

that you might be embarrassed to post to

all your friends, but that you want to

share with your best friend or, you

know, your family. Um, everyone's like,

"This is never going to work because you

can always take a screenshot. This makes

no sense." So, it it doesn't go away.

You can take a screenshot. And I think

one of the the big inventions and that's

why I think it's so important to get

this feedback. One of the big inventions

that we made uh at that later that

summer when Bobby and I were working out

at my dad's house, we invented a way to

detect if someone had taken a

screenshot. And so we would send a

little notification back that said,

"Hey, you know, your friend took a

screenshot." And I think that was part

of what made the service fun that, you

know, you could set how long it would uh

appear for your friend, but if they

wanted to save it, they could take a

screenshot, but you would know that they

saved it. And I think that was one of

sort of the early uh feedback loops of

the product that helped, you know, make

people feel comfortable using it for

picture messaging. How long was that

journey between you having that

conversation with Reggie about wanting

photos to disappear and the moment when

you knew Snapchat was going to be a big

deal? like how how long is that gap?

I would say it took until maybe

um certainly the following school year

for me. So over that summer, Bobby and I

went to my dad's house, worked a lot uh

on the service, renamed it Snapchat, got

a lot of feedback when we were using it

with our friends, everyone wanted like,

"Hey, can I add a caption? Can I add,

you know, can I draw on it?" Because in

the original version, it was just a

photo. Um, but because people were, you

know, using just our friend group using

it to to communicate, we needed to add

things like captions and and drawing.

So, I think the Snapchat launched in the

app store about September of 2011. And

it probably wasn't until late that fall,

maybe or even into into the following

beginning of 2012 that I was I remember

sitting in the back of my classroom. And

we had a a snap counter that would count

the total number of snaps ever sent, you

know, and in the early days it was like

hundreds or a thousand or whatever. um

and you'd you know I'd refresh the page

and it wouldn't the number wouldn't

change you know but by that time by you

know the beginning of 2012 every time I

refreshed the snap counter page you know

the number would go up and it would jump

by one or two or 10 so it was clear that

people were using the service and and

communicating and that's when I was like

ah this is this is fun you know not only

are we loving it with our friends but

there's more people using it too one of

the things you said there is that you

were using people around you your

friends to give you feedback on what

features you should add next you said

people wanted to write on and they

wanted to add

captions. As a founder, that must be

quite hard because you're getting lots

of feedback to change lots of things all

the time. How do you know what to filter

as good feedback that you'll implement

versus a distraction or bad feedback? Is

there a framework at all that you have

you've had to deploy? So, I think all

feedback is good feedback. All feedback

is valuable. I think what you do with it

is what matters. So, for example, let's

take the use of the the caption tool for

example. You know, we could have added a

super clunky caption tool that took

forever to use that was like, you know,

like social media where you add the

caption at the bottom of the photo and

tap it and hashtag stuff. The way that

we decided to implement captions to make

it easier for people to communicate is

all you have to do is tap on the photo

right after you took it. So, you'd snap

take the photo, tap, the keyboard would

pop up. there was a little caption bar,

you know, the caption bar uh well, you

know, that still allowed you to see the

photo behind it instead of it being sort

of attached to the photo below it. It

was right on top of the photo. And then

as soon as you hit enter, you could, you

know, jump to the page where you select

uh which friends you wanted to send it

to. So I think, you know, what was more

important than hearing feedback of, hey,

I I want a way to, you know, add a

caption or express more in the snap. The

way that we implemented that feedback

and designed something really fast and

easy to use is why that black bar

caption is you know now I think

synonymous with Snapchat and and is like

you know well well well known around

around the world. So it was a year from

the idea to the day when you raised

capital for the first time roughly. Yeah

more or less. And talk me through that.

So how much did you raise about raising

the capital and what was the business

like at that time in terms of users and

downloads? Yeah, I I don't remember the

exact uh sort of user statistics, but

what was really really helpful is that

we had about a a year of data. So, if

you remember back then there were a lot

of apps that were sort of like a a flash

in the pan, like they would get popular

really really quickly and then sort of

fade away. And so, venture investors

would kind of jump into these apps and

then the apps would get really popular

and then kind of fade. And so when we

were raising money, one of the things

that really helped us is we had a year's

worth of data to basically show, hey,

when people start using this product to

talk to their friends, they keep doing

it because it's really fun and it's

better than text message based

communication. Visual communication is

way more fun, more powerful, more

expressive than textbased communication.

And you know, people use it consistently

once they learn how. Um, and that was

really important to the investors who

were worried is this, you know, just

another flash in the pan type service.

Um, so, so we really just led I think we

had like three maybe five slides of just

the data. Um, do you remember feedback

you got from investors at that early

stage? I think this is important because

all founders are going to get the email

that tells them that they're not on to

something. Yeah, I think the biggest

piece of feedback was just like, hey,

this seems like something that these

really big powerful tech companies are

just going to copy and um, you know,

it's they're really tough to compete

with. So, you know, we we're not really

sure we want to invest in something

that's going up against these really

really big powerful tech companies. I

mean, there's some wisdom in that.

Certainly a lot of foresight in that

one. Yeah. Because the odds anyway of

building a a social networking app are

extremely low. It's we were saying

before we started recording that you've

got to be almost like delusional to

think that you can. I think at that time

too, you know, Snapchat came last after

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, like you

name it. All of those services had come

first. And so I think the idea that

like, you know, and that was still at

the time when people believed that

network effects meant that you couldn't

compete, right? Whoever has the biggest

biggest network is going to win. No one

else is going to be able to compete. And

so I think there was that concern that,

you know, oh, if these other competitors

are much bigger and they have network

effects, how are you ever going to grow

uh grow and and compete? So that was a

big piece of feedback. And then I think

there was just a whole other group of

people who didn't really understand what

the service was um and so weren't that

interested. But Jeremy at Lightseed

reached out. He had his profile picture

was a photo of him with Obama. Uh and I

was like, "Oh, okay. Must be like a real

you." Now with AI, you never know. But

but back then I was like, "Okay, must be

legit." So we met up with them and and

one of his partners that uh I guess his

daughter used Snapchat and loves

Snapchat and so they understood the

service and what it was about and how

she was using with her friends and so

they ended up investing

$485,000 at a $4.25 million valuation.

What a deal in hindsight. How

many users did you have at the time when

you raised that capital? Uh I would have

guess about a h 100,000 or something

like that. And the valuation was $4

million roughly. 4.25. Yeah. In that

first year up until the point that you

raised that money, did you ever doubt

that Snapchat was going to work? And I

guess to understand the question a bit

more, you almost have to add

a goal or ambition to it. So, I'm

presuming you wanted it to be and

thought it could be a company. Did you

ever doubt that it would be? Was there

anything that ever happened in that

first year?

There was one moment where we

accidentally took down the Snapchat

infrastructure for three days. So the

service stopped working entirely for

three days. Actually it something broke

and it took us three days to fix it. And

we were like we're we're done. I mean

what are we going to do? You know uh the

service has been down for three days.

It's a messaging service you know. Uh so

people haven't been able to talk to

their friends like is anyone going to

use it? Um, and when we turned it back

on, people just started using it again.

And that gave us a lot more conviction

and that, you know, we had a product

that people really just loved using. How

and why was it growing? Was it a

marketing campaign or was it organic?

The only thing that we ever saw work

was, you know, friends using it with

friends, telling their friends about it

and wanting to, you know, learn how to

use it because communicating with photos

was a new thing. I mean people were

hadn't been talking with pictures before

and even the way people thought about

photos it was like a photo is for saving

a precious moment right like that's or

like a family photo like that's really

how people were thinking about photos at

the time you weren't able like that was

just coming out of the digital camera

like plug it into your computer and

upload the photos era. So there was this

massive, I think, behavioral change of

people realizing like, wow, like no, a

picture is worth a thousand words. And

now that I can take it instantly on my

phone and and send it with my friend in,

you know, uh, a couple hundred

milliseconds, like we can talk with

pictures and instead of just use

pictures to save memories. I don't think

we really remember that. Isn't that

crazy that we don't remember? It wasn't

that long ago. I know, but we just don't

remember. Like, as you were saying, I

was like, Yeah, you couldn't like

send a photo to your friend to talk.

Yeah. I was like I was trying to think

of the app that I could have used back

then to do that and there just like

isn't one. Yeah. But now I'm dating

myself, you know. It's terrible.

No, that's crazy. We We forget that

because it's so common place now on

every app. You You can And I guess they

they ultimately got that from you.

Copied that from you. I've got this

photo um from the early days. Do you

remember this photo? Oh, this is

awesome. This picture is great. What is

this picture? Where are you? What are

you doing? Who is that? Well, this was

actually our first office, which was

great. It was called the Blue House in

Venice, 523 Oceanfront Walk. And

actually, you know, things sort of uh

had had reached a breaking point at my

dad's house. I think there were seven or

eight of us living there. You know, one

one night, his girlfriend at the time,

now wife, came in and one of, you know,

one of our teammates was like sleeping

on the couch with a blanket she had

bought him for Christmas and she was

just like, I think there's like we've

had enough here. So, we we had to get an

office uh and and move out. And we were

going to dinner in Venice and we walked

past this old blue house and it had a

four lease sign on it. We were like,

"Wow, this would be wild. We could have

an office on the beach on the Venice

boardwalk." Um, let's let's call them.

And we called them. They wanted a crazy

amount per square foot in rent. We

couldn't afford at the time, but we

ultimately waited uh a bit longer and

and were able to to negotiate that down

quite a bit and moved in to the Blue

House. And I think the best thing about

the Blue House was that the the Venice

Boardwalk is one of the most popular

destination tourist destinations in the

in California, maybe even in the world.

I mean, it's more than 10 million people

a year come to the Venice Boardwalk. And

we had a big ghost logo, our big app

icon outside and all day long people

would come up and talk to us about the

app or give us feedback or need help

with their account. And so we were just

immersed in people from all over the

world who were using Snapchat and wanted

to come talk to us about it. ult

ultimately became like a little too

much. But in the beginning in the

beginning uh it was just so amazing to

be right there on the boardwalk uh with

so many people. And so how many people

could fit into the blue house? I think

you know at max capacity it was 20

something. I think we were 20some people

by the time we moved out. Maybe 30. It

was pretty cra I mean I was playing

footsie with you know people under the

under the table. We were pretty

smooshed. And how many users did you

have at that time for people to be

coming up on the broadwalk and having

conversations? You must have been pretty

popular at that point. It must have been

millions, I would have I would guess.

Yeah. And you've dropped out of

university by that point, obviously.

Yeah. Tell me about that decision

because that's not I know the app's

growing and everything, but to drop out

of a prestigious university can't be a

super easy decision.

I I really felt I had no choice. I

didn't have enough credits to graduate.

I mean, I you know, I was doing the I

was doing the product design program,

the engineering program. I had a lot

more classes that I had to to finish and

ultimately we'd raised $485,000

uh from investors and you know I was

spending all day trying to pass these

you know I was taking I think 20 credits

at the time or something uh and trying

to trying to work on our business. I

just couldn't do both at the same time.

So I was like you know hopefully one day

I'll be able to go back. I actually did

end up going back and got my degree in

2018 which was awesome. Um and uh but um

I just couldn't do both at the same

time. Why did you go back and get your

degree? I really did not want to have

that debate with our kids where they're

like, you know what I mean? Where

they're like, but dad, like you, you

know what I mean? Like, you you didn't

you dropped out. You don't have a

degree. Like, why do I need one? You

know, I I think colleges can can be

really valuable. It's not for everybody,

but it made a huge impact in in my life.

So, I wanted to be able to, you know,

show how important that is to our to our

kids. I was thinking earlier when we

were talking about college

university the world was different when

you went to university and college and

you've got these four boys now the

oldest I think is 14 years

old if he wants to be like dad say he

wanted to follow in your footsteps is

there anything else based on how the

world is currently that you'd be

advising him to learn before the age of

like 21 is are there any topics or

degrees that you would be pushing him

towards now if he wanted to be like dad

if that was his decision

I think one of the most important things

today is really nurturing creativity. I

mean, I think creativity is really the

the X factor, certainly in the age of

AI, right? And so, I think nurturing

creativity, finding ways to develop

those skills. For example, Flynn who's

14, he loves drawing. He's unbelievably

talented at drawing. And I think

sometimes he's like, well, I don't know

if there's a career in drawing, but I

think sometimes he doesn't see that

drawing is just the way that he's

expressing creativity. drawing is the

beginning of that journey of exercising

those muscles in your brain that allow

you to visualize something that other

people don't see. Right? And and that's

one way that's one tool, one skill he

can use to express what's in his in his

brain. But I think exercising that that

muscle, that creativity is so important.

I think creativity is just becoming more

and more rare ultimately because so much

of our society is oriented around things

we can measure. creativity is so hard to

measure and so I think it can be really

tough um you know to to find the the

dedication to invest in developing

creativity when it's uncertain what the

outcome is. Um but that that's really

what I would encourage him or so many so

many people to do. We're all born

creative. We're all you know we're all

born with this ability to express

ourselves. And it's only over time I

think that we stop you know practicing

that ability or you know uh or we become

fearful of expressing ourselves. And and

I think that that can be overcome

because we think through job titles at

that age, don't we? We think what's the

job title that I should be aiming at. So

doctor, lawyer, etc. versus we don't

necessarily think as much about

collecting useful long-term skills. I'd

say I've got a my girlfriend's little

brother now who's like racking his brain

trying to pick a job title for the next

like 60 years of his life. I'm like, it

doesn't work like that, you know? And

the world is changing so quickly now as

well. It's probably makes more sense to

try and get some fundamental skills that

will translate. Plus, job titles are

totally ridiculous. Anyways, in the in

the early days, we would just make up

anyone who joined the team, we would

just make up their uh their title. It

would have nothing to do with anything.

Yeah. Um so job titles are ridiculous

when the team is small, right? Just in

general, right? Because I think people

anchor to job titles to confer confer

status, right? And I think ultimately

like amazing impact, creativity, great

ideas come from anywhere, right? And the

more that you focus your organization

around hierarchy, I think the less

you're focusing on the right things,

which are how are we making sure great

ideas are coming from anywhere, getting

surfaced, you know, and um being built.

But hierarchy comes into place when

things start to get big and we need to

put processes and reporting lines in

place. How do you defend against that?

Well, I I think you're getting at like

the fundamental problem that all

companies end up having and I I think

there's there's a great book called

Loonshots which I really love that

actually gets at this issue directly and

and

basically what the author Safi Beall

found was essentially that very big

companies you know once they get a lot

larger they have a lot of customers to

serve they need to build all this

organizational infrastructure and

ultimately that comes with hierarchy but

the ones that continue to innovate that

are very successful at innovating

consistently over long periods of time

also have very small, very flat teams

that don't have any hierarchy at all

that are really, really focused on

innovating and on trying new things. And

ultimately, the companies that are

really successful find a way to build a

relationship between the huge

organization that is supporting all

these customers and needs to be

operationally rigorous and metrics

focused. Builds a relationship between

them and this very small group of people

who are trying crazy things. And he

gives a lot of examples. You know, one

of the ways that the United States was

able to win World War II, they had these

crazy group of scientists that were

trying new things like radar and stuff

like that at the time. But then they

were taking those ideas, bringing them

to the military, which is a huge, very

structured, hierarchical organization

and saying, "What do you guys think

about this? How can you play with this?

What are your ideas? What are your

feedback? Take this into battle. Put it

on an airplane. See what happens." and

then give that feedback back to this

very, you know, unstructured, flat,

small group of of uh inventors and

scientists. And by really focusing on

the relationship between those parts of

the organization, ultimately companies

can figure out how to build a strong

relationship between the two and then

innovate over time. So, how have you

done that at Snapchat? At Snapchat, we

have a really small design team. I think

it would surprise people. It's nine

people really. It is totally flat, so

there's no fancy titles. everyone is a

product designer. Um the the way that

the team works is very focused around

making things. That's the entire job. In

fact, your very first day when you start

you we have design critiques once a week

for a couple hours. Your very first day

you have to present uh something. So you

have to make something and and present

it. And what that does that I think is

really interesting and and powerful is

that ultimately of course on your first

day when you have no context for what

the company's working on, no idea what's

going on. How how on earth are you

supposed to come up with a great idea? I

mean it's almost impossible. But you

have to show an idea your first day. And

so ultimately on your very first day

your worst fear has come true that like

we're sitting there al together and

we're looking at an idea that's like

ultimately not that great. I mean

sometimes they're pretty good but

ultimately not that great. And that I

think opens the door to creativity

because you've already it already

happened. You already failed. There's

all the idea wasn't good. Uh and you

know what ultimately happens on our own

design team is that 99% of ideas are not

good but 1% is. And you know we really

abide by that idea of like you know or

the concept that like the best way to

have a good idea is to have lots of

ideas. So the team is just constantly

generating an incredible number of ideas

and products and features and that sort

of thing. And ultimately our job is to

try to figure out what the great ones

are and then most importantly build a

strong relationship between this little

team that's coming up with all this

stuff all the time and our you know much

bigger engineering organization our

bigger product organization who also

have all sorts of amazing ideas and are

also innovating in their own way and

build a flywheel between the two where

we can ultimately you know make a lot of

new products and then consistently make

them better. So many questions there

that I'm very very curious about. The

first one is do you measure the amount

of ideas that that small design team are

producing?

No, but I I do know when we need more.

Okay. Okay. Fine. Okay. So, you've got a

you've got a sort of an intuitive

feeling. It's small team. You can stay

close. And then how do you get the

bigger organization to cooperate with

the smaller design team when the bigger

organization have their own incentives,

they have their own planning cycles,

they have their own egos as all humans

do. How do you get them to work

together? For us, the the bridge

organization is probably our product

organization. And they really helped

connect the dots between the engineering

folks and the design folks. And a lot of

this stuff, you know, actually mirrors

the relationship that Bobby and I had in

the very early days where I was more

design focused. I had a bit of an

engineering background and had taken

some CS, but I was more design focused.

And Bobby, you know, is an unbelievable

uh computer scientist, right? He, you

know, took math and and uh computer

science at school, but he also loved

design. And so we had this really you

know powerful relationship where you

know I I could talk with him about new

ideas and and design and he could talk

about the engineering constraint. So

when you know for example when we were

inventing this this notion that you know

you would tap to take a photo and hold

to record a video at the time that was a

really big deal right to to you know to

help people more easily use their

cameras. Now every camera on a

smartphone is tab for a photo hold for

video. But the engineering complexity

that was required to enable that design

was something that we really talked

about and worked through because the way

that the design and the animations had

to work and the way that you, you know,

held your finger really mattered with

the way that ultimately we were flipping

between, you know, the the video feed

and or capturing uh a still a still

image. And it was that dialogue that

ultimately ended up you know resulting

in a in a new product and a new you know

uh thing that people could use. So we

mirrored a lot of that and tried to

build that relationship across the

organization constantly over time where

you know there's there's a real dialogue

and an understanding and an appreciation

both for design and engineering um you

know that oftentimes is facilitated by

our product organization. In terms of

that small design team you said you have

a critique session once a week. What is

a critique session? So it's just where

we look at work. That's all we do. Uh we

people just share uh new work. So for a

couple hours we'll just look at all the

new ideas that have come out of that

small and new designs that have come out

of the last week from that team. And

these can be anything. Really anything.

Yeah. Oftentimes they're oriented around

solving a problem. So kind of coming

back to that product design philosophy

like what problem are we trying to

solve? How can we empathize with our you

know community? Okay. our creators are

having friction, you know, posting to to

Snapchat. It's, you know, confusing the

way that they're reading their story

replies or that's not working the right

way. How can we make that easier? And

then we'll just look at a ton of ideas.

And are these you said there's eight or

nine people. Are they working in

isolation within that team or are they

working as one team? They very often are

getting feedback from one another.

Oftentimes are tackling projects

together and small teams, you know, um

but all come together on a on a regular

basis. I love this this point you were

making about the key thing that you've

discovered is is that the game is more

ideas, not trying to find a perfect

idea. More ideas, more feedback. Yeah.

More ideas, more feedback. You increase

your failure rate, you get more

feedback. It it does kind of go contrary

to what people think when they're

building a business. They think the game

is to have the perfect idea. I But those

are all people who've never built a

business before.

Yeah. Because eventually you learn you

learn something, right? You learn that

you're not that good at guessing. Yeah.

And I think ultimately you have to

maximize your rate of learning. I mean

that's that's just critical. Maximize

your rate of learning. Let's go back to

the um those early days. You're in that

office. When you think about the people

in that photo that were part of the

first sort of 20, how important in

hindsight is hiring? I think it's

everything. I think it's everything. And

these were really really just wonderful

people. I mean still you know uh in many

cases close friends and I think

interesting there was a moment I

realized

um David Daniel Bobby and a couple other

of our original engine all of them uh

you know original engineers were

musicians as well and it was really

interesting this moment you know because

the the early folks who were working on

the engineering side of of Snap were

unbelievably creative and

unbelievably talented and it it was an

interesting interesting like aha moment

because I think often times people think

of the disciplines as separate like oh

there's designers and then over there

there's engineers and I think so much of

the magic actually is when those

disciplines like combine or cross over

or people who really love and appreciate

both especially for a company that's

aspiring to be creative absolutely in

everything that it's doing um on this

point of hiring did you make any hiring

mistakes in those early days oh

absolutely and what were those mistakes

not necessarily people but the the

frameworks were were off or the way that

you've hired these people or what what

what caused the mistakes? I think

occasionally in the early days um we

almost like overindexed on the wrong

types of experience if that makes sense.

So one of the things we really wanted to

do was bring in people who were very

very experienced leaders who had run

much bigger teams. That was like if we

want to build a big company we got to

find people who have run big companies

and big teams. And so one of the early

engineering leaders who joined our team,

I think he, you know, he was coming from

from working on a team of 300 or

something like that at at Amazon was

coming to like a team of eight at at

Snapchat. But we were really thinking

ahead about like how can we hire people

who can actually help us scale here and

and build something uh really big. And I

think that that sort of focus on

leadership experience and experience

leading at scale was really valuable. I

think what was oftentimes a bit less

valuable in those early days were was

almost more people who had very specific

domain expertise. So there were people

who would you know come into our come

for an interview or something like that

and be like well I think what you guys

should do is add likes because every

other platform has likes. So if you just

add likes then people will you know use

your service more and not really coming

with the same open-mindedness and

curiosity about well why is Snapchat

doing it differently? like why don't you

have likes and comments? It's like what

how are you thinking about the service

um differently and and how could I how

can I change and grow and adapt to the

way you're thinking about it to help you

grow faster and and so I think now one

of the things we're always looking for

in the interview process is adaptability

right it's amazing to have prior

experience but the question is how do

you apply that prior experience to a new

context and change and adapt the way

that you see things change your

perspective um you know to be able to

meet the needs of our business which is

different than you know other businesses

What what are the other factors? If if

you were to make a perfect Snapchat

employee now, what would their

personality be? Their their psychology,

their their attributes. We we have three

values and three leadership behaviors.

Three values are kind, smart, and

creative. That's been the those have

been the values since the the very

beginning really because Bobby and I

were just having a conversation like

what kind of people do we want to work

with? Kind, smart, creative. Like great.

But since then and and we can spend some

more time talking about this. I think

what was really fascinating over time

was to learn you know and by the way 10

years ago people were not talking about

kindness at work. I mean people would be

like sorry what you know no kind no kind

smart creative like why kindness. What

we found was that with the that the

relationship between kindness and

creativity is really really important

because unless people feel comfortable

coming up with crazy ideas, unless they

feel comfortable that if they say, you

know, they have some new idea and it

actually isn't that great that they're

not going to be laughed at that they'll

be supported, right? Unless you have

that sort of supportive culture, it's

very hard to be creative. And so we

learned over time that actually wow

kindness is is kind of the essential

ingredient if you want to have a

creative a creative culture. But

anyways, kind, smart, creative, smart,

pretty self-explanatory. Um, and then uh

when it comes to leadership behaviors,

there's three leadership behaviors or

attributes we look for. I just want to

pause on that point of kind. Do you make

a distinction between someone being nice

and being kind? Because in your

environment, you also mentioned that you

do these critique sessions and you're

giving people crit critical feedback and

if a culture gets a little bit too kind,

then isn't that going to inhibit

innovation and feedback? We always

differentiate between kind and nice.

There's a couple examples that I think

help with that. So like for one, um I

think it's really kind to tell somebody

that they have something stuck in their

teeth. Yeah, you have something stuck in

your teeth, you want to know about it,

right? It might make you feel awkward.

Certainly as the person pointing it out,

it's a little awkward, right? If you

want if you just want to be nice, you

pretend nothing's going going going on

and you just say, "Oh, you know, nice to

meet you, whatever." But if you're

really being kind and you want to help

that person, you say, you know, you got

something stuck in your teeth. You you

got to take care of that. And I think

that helps distinguish between, you

know, nicities and being kind and really

wanting to help help somebody. I think I

think another great example is if

somebody's really struggling, you know,

at work or they're struggling to grow or

they're struggling with, you know, to to

perform um you know, their duties at at

SNAP, you know, the nice thing to do is

maybe just make them feel good about it.

Oh, don't worry. Uh you know, um I'm

sure it'll be okay. The kind thing to do

is really help them succeed, right? Say,

hey, this isn't working because you're

doing X, Y, and Z. You know, here are

some things to do to think about that

differently. provide that really direct

feedback that allows people to grow and

that's the kind thing to do rather than

just making them feel good about not

meeting expectations. Leadership values.

You said there's three leadership

values. Okay, there's three of them. The

first one is is T-shaped leadership. So,

we talk a lot about T-shaped leadership.

What we mean by that uh is that you have

a real depth of experience, a depth of

expertise in a given area and then a

real breadth of understanding of the

business overall and an ability to

connect with lots of different types of

people who think different ways because

you need to be able to connect your

expertise to all the different areas of

our business to really drive impact as a

leader. I mean, I think that's one of

like almost the hallmarks of of running

a business today is it's basically

impossible to do anything interesting

without a team, right? The way that the

world works today is very complicated

and it's really important that you have

folks who have deep expertise but then

they have to apply it to all these other

crossunctional areas you know so they

have to have a familiarity with it and

an ability to relate to people with

different you know viewpoints or or

other you know uh areas of expertise. So

and as we proceed with this these

leadership principles are you saying

that in order to become a leader at

Snapchat you need these three things or

are you saying everybody at Snapchat

needs these three things? We think

everyone is a leader. So, we do apply it

uh broadly. But, of course, you know, um

you know, I think it's really important

as we're thinking about hiring or

bringing in a new leader that, you know,

that this is something that we we talk

to folks about. So, if someone's not

quite T-shaped, if they're a little bit

eye-shaped, is there something they can

do to become a bit more te T-shaped?

Yeah, that that's almost maybe the the

easier one, right? If you can build on a

if you can build on a real depth of

expertise by going engaging with folks

maybe outside of your comfort zone or in

different parts of the business and

build that curiosity and understanding

that helps develop I think that breadth

of understanding. I think what's harder

is if you're a generalist and you don't

have that deep skill set or that deep

area of expertise, it's really really

hard to bring enough value to the team,

right? And I think that's that's where

people get frustrated with like the idea

of middle management, right? Where it's

like, oh, this is just a person who, you

know, knows a little about a lot but

can't really help me solve this problem

because they don't really know the

details. They don't really understand,

you know, how how to help me, you know,

grow as an individual or solve this

tough technical problem. And so I think

that's why that area of expertise is so

important because it's so hard to

inspire people that you're working with

if you don't know a lot about, you know,

the the area that you're working in. And

do you need to be a T-shape leader at

Snapchat now and when there was 10 of

you in the in the bedroom or in your

dad's house? Has it always been

important or is that a function of being

bigger? That's a great question. I wish

we had been more thoughtful about the

leadership values and and

characteristics we were looking for back

then. I think, you know, when you're

working on a team of 10 or a team of 20,

you're not thinking as much about what

what leadership characteristics are

really important to us. It's more about

like how do we survive tomorrow? Um, you

know, but but I think over time as we

learned what leaders were really

successful at Snap, we were able to, you

know, kind of look at those attributes

and say, okay, you know, these are the

leaders who can who who really succeed

here and drive a lot of value for our

business. Before we move on to this the

second two, if this Evan could have gone

back to the Evan that was running a team

of 10 and he could have pulled him aside

and said, "Listen, here's some advice

that you're going to need to know about

leadership in building this team. The

most critical advice I could give you at

this time, and this is for all the

entrepreneurs out there that are

building at they're laying the

foundations of a potentially very big

company right now, what would you have

whispered in his ear?" I would have

said, "Everything's going to be okay."

Really? Everything's going to be okay.

Um, you know, I I think sometimes people

are too focused

on making the right decision and not as

focused on fixing it if they're wrong.

And I think what I would have put more

emphasis on is just how quickly are you

changing your mind when you receive new

information? How quickly are you fixing

a problem or a mistake if you didn't

make the right decision in the first

place? And that's the feedback loop that

is so missionritical to building a

business in the early days. It has very

little to do. Obviously, there's

existential decisions, you know, and and

those can, you know, create some big

problems for your business. But most

decisions are not existential decisions.

And the more important thing is to make

a decision and then if you're wrong, fix

it. Um, and I think it's the when you're

wrong, fixing it part that deserves most

of the attention and and also how you

can identify, you know, who your great

leaders are, who, you know, uh, who

really talented folks on the team are

because they're very quick to point out,

you know, I don't think we did that

right. I think we should take this path,

you know, this other path that, you

know, we we maybe hadn't considered the

first time. And and I think it takes

courage to to say that in in an

organization rather than just say, "Oh,

we're doing a great job." Yeah. And when

you're back there and you're you've made

a mistake, there's something you've done

wrong in hindsight, did you know in your

because because one of the things that I

think of when I was a first-time founder

building a student notice board was I

would get feedback and the feedback

would be saying you're wrong about this.

You need to change. And I think at

sometimes there was a part of me that

knew, but I was like too scared to act

upon it. So I kind of like gaslit myself

to just keep going. And I think a lot of

founders do that. I know this because

they they come to me in my portfolio and

they say, "Ah, Steve, there's this guy

we've hired and he's been there now for

a year and he's just not cutting it."

I'm like, "Why the are you telling

me?" And they're they're procrastinating

avoiding the conversation, but clearly

they know. Clearly they know it's not

right.

It's funny you say that because anytime

someone comes to ask me about like that

type of people advice, like, "What do

you think we should do?" You know, do

you think that I'm like sounds like

you've already made up your mind.

So um so yeah I I think it is I think it

is really important to you know act on

that feedback not be afraid to change

direction quickly if you know you you

realize that you made a mistake but as

you point out it's it's hard to do and

sometimes it is worth seeing if you know

your your bet you know plays out. You

don't want to thrash the team and change

your mind all the time. So sometimes you

know it is it is sometimes worth seeing

things through a little bit before you

change. Is there anything else you would

have said to that younger Evan in that

in your dad's house advice? Um at at

that point before we had scaled to a lot

of you know thousands of people I think

we could have been much more clear on

the culture the kind smart creative

piece and really embedded that in the

team prior to scaling because one of the

biggest challenges that we confronted

was you know as we went from 20 people

to 2,000 people we basically imported

all of these different cultures from all

sorts of different companies like we

imported an an Amazon contingent right

we you know who They really love their

six-page documents. We, you know,

imported a a Google uh contingent,

right? And they're very focused on

consensus based decision-making. We

imported, you know, a contingent from

from Meta as well. And I think we were

too slow to be really clear about what

our values were and what that looked

like in practice, what those behaviors

looked like. And I think if we had

earlier and and faster one, so when when

we're evaluating performance, we look at

our values, kind, smart, creative, we

have specific behaviors attached to that

that are actually researchbacked and

whatever. We did a whole study to

understand which of those behaviors are

really tied to performance and those

values. But that gives people a really

clear framework for the expectations for

how to behave at Snap and our unique

culture. And there there was a moment of

time moment in time where I felt like we

were losing control of our culture. And

I wasn't happy with our our company and

the team. I remember I was complaining

to a friend of mine. This is probably

like your story of of folks coming to

you and saying, "Oh, it's not working."

I was I was complaining to a friend of

mine and I was just like, "Man, I just

don't like I don't like it. Like I don't

like my job. I don't like what our

company's become." And she just looks at

me and she's like, "Then fix it." And I

was like, "Great point." Um and and I

you know I think at that it just it had

changed and grown so quickly that it was

really hard to stay true to our values

but I think you know uh I really took

that advice to heart and just started

trying to fix it with our team getting

really clear about the values getting

really clear about the behaviors holding

a higher bar and saying hey you know if

you're not into the kind smart creative

thing that's okay there are other

companies with different cultures but

you know that really matters to us here.

So, do you do you wish you had this

would have been a pretty remarkable

thing to do, but do you wish you had

made like a culture bible in the early

days and then like I'm thinking

practically what should a founder do

then if they're at that stage when

they've got a small team now to prevent

what happened to you in terms of the

culture becoming a little bit too pick

and mix. So, I think it's less about the

culture bible and more about how you

apply whatever your values are to your

hiring processes, to your promotion

processes, to whether or not people

still work at the company. And so, we

were too slow to embed those values in

our performance evaluation. And so, I

think if we had been way faster at just

saying, hey, these are our values and

what we stand for. This is what it looks

like in practice. Uh, and if you're not

living up to that, this isn't the right

home for you. like that that would have

helped shape the culture a lot faster

also because immediately people see oh

wow if they're serious about their

values and they're asking people to

leave if they won't live up to their

values well then I you know I I better

get on board with the values or find you

know another culture that fits you know

fits my personality better it just

doesn't seem like a priority to founders

culture I think it's such a priority but

it's hard to understand what it means

you know I had so many people telling me

like really you got to really focus on

the culture focus on the culture like

like what do you mean by culture it's

like it's actually just how people

behave, right? I mean, that's really

what we're saying like what is the

collection of group behaviors, you know,

that are uh acceptable or norms in your

in your company. So, I think instead of

using this big culture word, which I was

hearing a lot, but not understanding how

it was like tactically connecting to our

business, I think when we're talking

with founders, we should just be more

specific about, you know, how people are

living their the values of their company

every day through their behaviors. And

that's dictated essentially by the

incentives of the organization because

what you said is you basically

introduced incentive structures said

you're going to be exited or you're

going to be promoted and and getting

really real about that and serious. But

it, you know, that the tough

conversations come where it's like,

well, that person's a superstar, you

know, but they're not really living our

kindness value. And Bobby, I think, is

so is was so great on this. Bobby is

like, Evan, there's no such thing as a

brilliant jerk. If you're really

brilliant, how could you possibly be a

jerk? I mean it just me, you know, and

you're like, damn, I love that. So, so I

think this concept that like if you're

really that smart, how could you

possibly be a jerk to people? I mean,

what that that I think, you know, really

informed our approach to to building out

our team and and I think gives you that

clarity in those moments where you're

like, "Wow, but they're so smart or

they're so talented." It's like, yeah,

but if they're that smart and talented,

why can't they just be kind to people?

What was the worst advice you got in